Super-scalable LDAP directory driven by big data

Radiant Logic announced a commercial solution for distributed storage and processing for enterprise identity management. Based on Hadoop, this new highly-available version of the LDAP directory, or HDAP, allows enterprises to channel the power of large cluster and “elastic” computing in their identity infrastructure.

With HDAP as part of the upcoming RadiantOne 7.0 virtualization release, companies can scale their access and throughput, using the first highly scalable and secure directory that’s based on big data and search technology.

The tension between the demands of cloud – enabled environments and the limitations of LDAP has made it impossible to increase access speed and reliability – until now. With this new HDAP innovation, Radiant Logic is marrying Hadoop and search technology with LDAP to open a new world of performance and possibility for IdM, data management, and beyond.

According to Dieter Schuller, Radiant Logic’s VP of business development, “Our customers know how RadiantOne virtualization streamlines their identity and access infrastructures, reduces complexity, and speeds deployments—and they’re taking advantage of RadiantOne to integrate more attributes from across their infrastructures, as well as publish new views into their identity data. But we needed a better way to store the incredibly dynamic and complex views of identity our system generates.”

Such storage needed to scale on demand, while supporting smart search and analysis at a scale that was up-to-now unreachable for the enterprise. “Finally, there’s a robust security solution that’s built on a well-known model that also leverages the best of today’s technology,” Schuller continues. “Now companies can more easily integrate with cloud applications, federate with partners, and enrich their authorization and access policies.”

With RadiantOne, enterprises can add or remove servers/nodes at will, increasing or decreasing throughput as needed. This new HDAP-enabled RadiantOne 7.0 system can be radically upgraded to handle high demand, without missing a beat—or slowing access. Currently in beta, a single node of the new RadiantOne HDAP store can handle 50,000 queries per second, and because the image is replicated across all nodes, load balancing allows the system to increase the aggregated throughput in a near-linear fashion.

But speed and performance aren’t the only benefits. According to Radiant Logic CTO Claude Samuelson, “HDAP leverages our virtualization layer, serving as storage for a synchronization powerhouse. By deploying a full LDAP directory on top of a cluster of Hadoop/ZooKeeper nodes, the new RadiantOne offers extremely tight levels of replication between nodes, ensuring that the image of the enterprise’s entire identity infrastructure is always kept up to date across every node.”